WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House expressed support Monday for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following media reports that he shared sensitive military details in another Signal messaging chat, this time with his wife and brother.
Neither the White House nor Hegseth denied that he had shared such details in a second chat, blaming what they called disgruntled employees and the media and claiming no classified information was shared.
“The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.”
The posture from President Donald Trump’s administration was meant to hold the line, at least for now, against Democratic demands for Hegseth’s firing when the Pentagon is engulfed in turmoil. Four senior aides departed last week during an internal investigation over information leaks.
The latest revelation was certain to add to questions about the judgment of the embattled Pentagon chief, coming on top of last month’s disclosure of his participation in a Signal chat with top Trump administration leaders in which details about the military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi militants were shared.
Leavitt’s description of an internal conflict between Hegseth and the Pentagon workforce reflected the administration’s efforts to deflect attention from the national security implications of the revelation by casting it instead in starkly political terms and blaming disgruntled former employees as the source of the claims.
Latest reports of Hegseth’s Signal use
The New York Times reported Sunday that the information shared in a Signal messaging chat with Hegseth’s wife, brother and others was similar to what was communicated in the already disclosed chain with Trump administration officials.
A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the second chat to The Associated Press. The person said it included 13 people and was dubbed “Defense ‘ Team Huddle.”
White House officials first learned of the second Signal chat from news reports Sunday, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Hegseth, responding to the reports while attending the White House Easter Egg Roll, didn’t address the substance of the allegations or the national security implications they raised but instead assailed the media.
“They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations,” Hegseth said. “Not going to work with me. Because we’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, struck a similar tone, writing on Sunday night on X: “Secretary Hegseth is busy implementing President Trump’s America First agenda, while these leakers are trying to undermine them both. Shameful.”
The Trump administration’s response on the use of Signal
The Trump administration has struggled in its public explanations about senior officials’ use of Signal, a commercially available app not authorized to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information.
The first chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included a number of Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.
Officials have repeatedly insisted that the information shared on Signal was not classified, though the contents of that chat, which The Atlantic published, shows that Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on the Iran-backed Houthis last month.
The Trump administration has faced criticism for failing to take action so far against top national security officials who discussed plans for the strike in Signal, and the latest report fueled additional calls for Hegseth’s ouster.
“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer posted Sunday on X. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”
The New York Times reported that the group in the second chat included Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser.
The Times said the second chat had the same warplane launch times that the first chat included. Multiple former and current officials have said sharing those operational details before a strike would have certainly been classified and their release could have put pilots in danger.
Hegseth’s Signal use is under investigation by the Defense Department’s acting inspector general at the request of the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The senior Democratic member, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, urged the watchdog Sunday to probe the reported second chat as well.
Wider turmoil inside the Pentagon
The Pentagon has confronted a wave of turbulence stretching beyond Signal. Defense officials have faced scrutiny over a seemingly haphazard and disjointed campaign to purge online content that promoted women and minorities, in some cases scrambling to restore posts after their removals came to light.
Just last week, four officials in Hegseth’s inner circle departed as the Pentagon hunts down leaks of inside information.
Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff; were escorted out of the Pentagon.
While the three initially had been placed on leave pending the investigation, a joint statement shared by Caldwell on X on Saturday said the three “still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”
Caldwell was the staff member designated as Hegseth’s point person in the Signal chat with Trump Cabinet members.
Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot also announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.
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Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
